Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded to 2 Scientists for Work on Genome Editing
By Katherine J. Wu, Carl Zimmer and Elian Peltier, New York Times | 10. 07. 2020
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna developed the Crispr tool, which can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with high precision.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded on Wednesday to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for their 2012 work on Crispr-Cas9, a method to edit DNA. The announcement marks the first time the award has gone to two women.
“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life,” Goran K. Hansson, the secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said as he announced the names of the laureates.
Dr. Charpentier and Dr. Doudna, only the sixth and seventh women in history to win a chemistry prize, did much of the pioneering work to turn molecules made by microbes into a tool for customizing genes — whether in microbes, plants, animals or even humans.
“I’m over the moon, I’m in shock,” Dr. Doudna, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
By Amy Dockser Marcus, Wall Street Journal [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky] | 10.29.2020
Aggregated News
Scientists using the Crispr gene-editing technology in human embryos to try to repair a gene that causes hereditary blindness found it made unintended and unwanted changes, frequently eliminating an entire chromosome or large sections of it.
A few years ago, lawyer Vladimir (name changed) who lives in a big Russian city decided to have a child with the help of a surrogate mother. His whole family was pleased when a girl was born. She was the...
By Ron Leuty, San Francisco Business Times | 10.09.2020
Aggregated News
It would dedicate $1.5 billion of its total to research and therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, stroke, epilepsy and other brain and central nervous system conditions.
In the course of just under two months that started 40 years ago this week, five events occurred that shaped the biotechnology industry and bioscience research. Looking back on these seminal events is a reminder of the odd ways in...
